WEDNESDAY, Feb 15, 2017: NOTE TO FILE

Industrial Society and its Detractors

From the bowels of Earth

Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS

TOPICS: INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM, FROM THE WIRES, ANTHROPOCENE ENTHUSIASTS, EXTERMINATE, DESTROY

Abstract: As I've noted elsewhere, I'm an ecomodernist Anthropocene enthusiast before breakfast (and fideist). I wrote the following very early in the morning before waking up.

TUCSON (A-P) — The feel-good view is that, yes, the meteoric 300 year rise of the global industrial growth empire has altered the planet, but as a planet for the taking, one that merely spun for four billion years awaiting the coming of Man, the transformation of red-in-tooth-and-claw nature into a paradise of Evermore, involves change. Our prosperous posterity to come, who will never be bit by mosquitoes or annoyed by flies, will never miss the horrific natural world with its poverty and diseases.

Earth will be transformed into a vast expanse of human habitat many stories high and deep. The unused lithosphere will be carved out to house billions of happy, prosperous people and their pets, and the floating cities that will cover all oceans will provide life everlasting to billions more transhumans as they transform themselves into the gods themselves. We of the early Anthropocene are the pioneers our descendants will remember as their progenitors. Celebrate! Grow! Prosper! Be fruitful! Acquire wealth beyond the dreams of avarice!

In Growth we Trust!

There are now hundreds of Schools of Sustainability 'infesting' academia, up from zero a decade ago. Meanwhile the pace of planetary 'destruction' has not slowed. The rate of species extinction, currently a thousand times higher than before the Anthropocene, is increasing. Before long the rate will be ten thousand times higher; —the pests and pestilences will never be missed. Only those species that serve human interests will be allowed to live in storybook recreational areas, be companion pets, or produce food in the industrial farming areas—to be food for mimes in the form of God on high.

To ease the transition, the old-timers will need help adjusting. Legions of students of sustainability will be needed, as the pace of change increases, to explain that the demands of social justice and equity (for humans), as well as protecting the environment (in set-aside preserves for human pleasure), demands that we grow the sustainability economy to provide for human needs (and manufactured wants). People need to know that we can grow with greater efficiency, improve the quality of growth, recycle more, paint beautiful mostly green murals on the sides of buildings, and smooth the transition to the ever better world to come.

Current detractors 'who just don't get it', like the Luddites and tree-huggers before them, are so pre-Anthropocene that they too will pass away. Nature boys like Thoreau will be remembered. But sustainable development WILL NOT END. There is now a beautiful sustainable park at Walden Pond where hundreds from around the world go each summer's day to enjoy that which only one solitary sojourner once roamed. If Thoreau could come back, and see the beach babes soaking up the rays on the shores of the pond, with their magic music boxes and acres of well oiled skin, he would surely approve.

As a greater writer than Thoreau put it, 'What is the city but the people?' People's lives matter and evermore people are flocking to the cities. Cities offer more (plenty enough of nature in well managed parks and zoos), far more of that which humans crave evermore of. There is enough of nature outside the parks too: iridescently bejeweled pigeons flock about the busy people, dandelions raise up their golden heads to heaven. English sparrows, more than there are grains of sand in the city, chirp in joy to partake of the plenitude of Man.

The old ones have had some difficulties. Alcoholics still nurse their tranquil brew, still wake up in the gutter at times in a puddle of their own urine. Innocent eyed children become busy people, coming and going, making the city bustle. Elites look down to survey their domain that still has room to improve. That is why more students of economics, sociology, engineering, sustainability, and political science are needed to help grow the steady economy so even today's tramps, those willing to work, can know prosperity.

Back to Home Page